As 2018 becomes a distant memory, now’s the perfect time to think about the road ahead and discuss the key trends that will shape digital signage and screen publishing in 2019.
The Digital Signage Market Will Continue to Grow
Over the past few years, digital signage has been warmly embraced by the retail sector for a variety of reasons. It’s more cost effective, easier to update, and more engaging and useful for consumers than traditional static signage. It’s fair to say that retail digital signage has truly proven it’s worth.
In the coming years, we’ll see more businesses outside of retail experimenting with the technology – event spaces, medical institutions, workplaces, restaurants… the list is practically endless.
Orbis Research has predicted that, because of its wide range of uses, the digital signage market will grow 34% to $31.62 billion by 2023. If you’re still on the fence about digital signage, 2019 is the perfect time to invest.
Contextual Content and Personalization Will Wow Customers
Many companies who invest in digital signage use the technology to replace their old marketing collateral. They simply take their current content and upload it to their screens.
While this isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, in 2019 the content that'll stand above the competition will adapt to context and who’s viewing it.
Contextual content is content that reflects the real world around it. For example, in a retail environment, your signage could promote ice creams and cold beverages when it’s hot outside. If the weather turns bad, the content could switch, encouraging customers to purchase umbrellas, rain macs, and so on. Great digital signage software will allow you to program these kinds of transitions to take place automatically.
Technology may be a way off being capable of recognising who’s looking at your signage (though not too far off, as we’ll discuss later!), but businesses should be exploring how they can create personalised digital signage content now. Perhaps there’s a target consumer you’re looking to attract to your business? Why not reach out to them directly with your content?
For illustrative purposes, imagine you own a store near a busy train station. You know that come 5pm, hundreds of commuters will be passing by outside. If you wanted to capture their attention, your digital signage could switch to saying, “Hey Commuter! Don’t miss our rush hour discounts!” This is just one idea, but with screen publishing, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Making truly creative content, which takes full advantage of the unique capabilities of digital signage, will be a huge trend for the industry going forward.
Harnessing Social Media Will Pay Dividends
Love it or loathe it, social media is here to stay. But you may be wondering, how does it relate to digital signage? Well, we predict that 2019 will see more and more businesses featuring social media in their content. Doing so increases brand engagement, spreads awareness, and promotes your social accounts.
Successful social media is all about reacting fast, and this can pay off massively when done right. If a humourous news story is trending on twitter, why not make fun of it, or twist it to your advantage with your digital signage?
Social media is also an excellent way of entertaining people who are looking to kill time. One of our customers, Tusenfryd, run the largest theme park in Norway. While their customers are queuing for tickets, they could feature their social feeds on their signage and encourage visitors to share their photos online throughout their trip.
However you choose to harness social media, doing so will pay dividends as consumers look for more ways to engage with the brands they love.
Digital Signage Technology Will Come on Leaps and Bounds
In the world of technology, the wheels of progress never stop turning. And 2019 won't be any different. We may not have flying cars and walking, talking androids like Blade Runner predicted, but real-world technology is certainly catching up.
In fashion retail, it's likely that we'll start to see greater experimentation with mirror-based digital signage, blurring the line between the real and digital world. We're not far away from being able to walk into a shop and virtually try on an entire catalogue of different clothing and accessories.
Face recognition and eye tracking technology is likely to be just as revolutionary for advertising. Signage promoting a new perfume, for instance, could display either the masculine or feminine version of the product depending on who's viewing it. Eye tracking cameras will able to record exactly which parts of your content are the most attention-grabbing, making A/B testing far easier and more meaningful.
We've yet to mention how far screen technology itself has come along. High resolution 4K OLED displays are becoming the norm, which isn't suprising – their bright, crisp images capture the attention of passers-by brilliantly. We're also seeing a rise in the amount of businesses building huge video walls, which are great for retail environments.
All in all, it's clear that the future is looking exciting for digital signage. If you need some tips on creating fresh digital signage content for 2019, why not download our 8 best practices?
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